PMQs: Cameron Blows Up What’s Left of the Consensus on Defence

By

Iain Martin

Mar 11, 2010 12:00 am GMT

A win for the under fire Tory leader at PMQs in the Commons this week. An initially confident Gordon Brown parried his questions about funding of the armed forces but then he did two things wrong. He brought Lord Ashcroft into the equation – rather tasteless in the middle of exchanges about funding of the armed services and war. And he unintentionally raised the topic of the Cold War. It had been the Tories who cut the defence budget by 30%, he pointed out.

Cameron – with a real fire in his belly that has been rather absent in recent weeks – had a punchy response. The defence budget had been cut after, on the Tory watch, the Cold War had been won.

This caused complete uproar on both sides of the House. Cameron stood up again, visibly enjoying himself, to point out that it had been on the Labour side that the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament badges had been worn at the height of that conflict. The joyful Tory benches went bananas. They had forgotten about this stuff: the Cold War, winning wars, patriotic duty.

Luke MacGregor/Reuters

Conservative Party leader David Cameron

A win for the under fire Tory leader at PMQs in the Commons this week. An initially confident Gordon Brown parried his questions about funding of the armed forces but then he did two things wrong. He brought Lord Ashcroft into the equation – rather tasteless in the middle of exchanges about funding of the armed services and war. And he unintentionally raised the topic of the Cold War. It had been the Tories who cut the defence budget by 30%, he pointed out.

Cameron – with a real fire in his belly that has been rather absent in recent weeks – had a punchy response. The defence budget had been cut after, on the Tory watch, the Cold War had been won.

This caused complete uproar on both sides of the House. Cameron stood up again, visibly enjoying himself, to point out that it had been on the Labour side that the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament badges had been worn at the height of that conflict. The joyful Tory benches went bananas. They had forgotten about this stuff: the Cold War, winning wars, patriotic duty.